As the Royal Family enter a new multiracial era, it’s worth remembering that no-one has tried harder than the Windsors to usher political racism to the UK.

As Royal fever reaches bold new heights with American tourists and Daily Mail readers owing to Prince Harry’s decision to disown centuries of traditional inbreeding and wisely expand his unhealthily-narrow gene pool, some people are unironically suggesting that the Monarchy is now a kind of anti-racist and progressive force in the world.

To make it absolutely clear: if the Royal Family were able to exercise complete rather than largely ceremonial control of the United Kingdom then Adolf Hitler would have been allied with London, and facism would most likely today preside over all of Europe. They are the last bastion of an obsolete order of nationalist authoritarianism in Europe; a legacy that can never be laundered no matter how many appearances Prince Charles makes on This Morning.

This cannot be chalked-off as ancient history. The Queen’s uncle, Edward VIII – a well known pro-Nazi according to Winston Churchill – led intense lobbying efforts in the mid 1930s to embrace, rather than destroy, Hitler’s burgeoning Nazi ideology. He is famously photographed standing alongside the Queen as a young child, teaching her how to salute the führer. Living a life of luxury as governor to the Bahamas while half a million Brits died as the hands of his favoured ideology in WWII, Edward lived until the age of 78 when he received a lavish Royal funeral.

Letters between Edward VIII and Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering and other leading Nazis are currently under lock and key in the Royal archives, and will remain so as long as there remains a few quid to be made from flogging Royal tat to tourists, which would no doubt be affected by revelations that Buckingham Palace contrived to hand the country to the Nazis.

The name ‘Windsor’ was adopted and the previous name ‘Saxe-Coburg and Gotha’ scrapped by George V in 1917 because of apparent ‘anti-German sentiment’ in WWI. Realistically it had less to do with the image of all Germans than the image of German/British aristocracy, in particular the final individual to use the title ‘Saxe-Coburg and Gotha’ and the Grandson of the great Queen Victoria, Charles Edward.

Charles Edward went on to become a leading Brownshirt, rising to the rank of Obergruppenfuhrer and coordinating with startling efficacy the ransacking of Jewish businesses and attacks on trade union meetings. However, before this he acted as Adolf Hitler’s Royal British liaison, successfully fostering a climate of anti-semitism and facist sympathies in the House of Windsor, who were terrified that the Russian Revolution might spill over across Europe.

During the 1920s and 30s, under the influence of conversations they had with their German relatives such as Charles Edward, many British royals became deeply embroiled in Fascist ideas, and flirted with Nazi ideology. The barely-concealed wish of the British monarchy to usher-in the burgeoning Nazi ideology from Berlin to London, and similar movements across other European Royal dynasties are documented in ‘Go-Betweens for Hitler’ by Karina Urbach.

Of course, none of this is the fault of Prince Harry or William. No-one chooses the family they are born into. At the moment, however, they are having their cake and eating it; enjoying the immense wealth and elite status that the monarchy brings to a handful of people, refusing to acknowledge and denounce its repugnant past, but still marketing themselves as a progressive force in the world.

The decision to flaunt the Royal Coat of Arms, to enjoy the pomp and ceremony of every Royal Wedding, death, birth, and to jet around the commonwealth at the British taxpayers’ expense is certainly a choice. Until the dark history of the British monarchy is acknowledged (by releasing the Royal Archives), rued and learnt from, then Buckingham Palace remains symbolically closer to Hitler’s Munich Brown House than the White House.

Prince Harry could get married wearing a Malcolm X t-shirt and it wouldn’t change the fact that his family unapologetically represents a stain on the hard-fought basic freedoms that common people now enjoy.